


shadows will fall behind you

by leftofrevolution



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-07
Updated: 2019-02-07
Packaged: 2019-10-23 21:33:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17691467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leftofrevolution/pseuds/leftofrevolution
Summary: Despite what most of the Empire seemed to think, Gabriel had from the beginning only ever been following Michael Burnham's lead.





	shadows will fall behind you

It was two months out from the end of the war with the Andorians when Michael Burnham tracked him down on Orion. Which she had no business doing. He was on leave, as he always was when there wasn’t a war on, and the Emperor would never use her only child as a mere messenger even if some other aliens had gotten it into their heads to be uppity.

She also walked in on him naked while he was being serviced by a pair of Orion twins, which he didn’t appreciate, especially considering she pointed a phaser at the one on his knees and ordered them both out of the room.

Gabriel had his own phaser in his hand as soon as the door started sliding open without so much as a courtesy knock, though he lowered it in exasperation the second he saw who was walking through the door. “What the fuck, Michael?”

He hadn’t seen her since the end of the Andorian war, and before that for nearly a year. For all of the Emperor’s occasional comments about Michael needing mentorship, Gabriel was assigned his own command ship when he was out fulfilling the Emperor’s will, and the Emperor didn’t particularly want him on the _Charon_ when he wasn’t. So besides their semi-annual chess game that happened whenever he was waiting around to report to the Emperor about the squashing of the latest insurgency, he and Michael had seen each other perhaps a dozen times in the past decade. They certainly weren’t familiar enough for her to be bothering him in the middle of sex.

They weren’t familiar each for him to be addressing her so informally, either, which she acknowledged with a slight raise of one eyebrow. He conceded with ill grace. “My apologies, your highness.” He pulled a sheet from the bed and wrapped it around his waist, a bit belatedly, before sketching a one-handed salute.

A pointless gesture; Michael wasn’t even looking at him anymore, instead casting her gaze around the room. “Is this what you do with your time when you’re not out winning my mother’s wars?” She did not sound impressed.

“No,” said Gabriel, knotting the sheet so both of his hands would be free. He refused to consider getting dressed. He’d once spent a six-month stint on Orion without wearing so much as a stitch of clothing, and to let Michael so thoroughly interrupt his leave after he’d been on it for less than six hours—after two fucking months of cleanup—was not ground he was willing to concede. “Normally I’m also drunk.”

Michael didn’t even say anything to that, but something about the incredulous cast of her gaze forced him to wrestle for a moment with a flash of genuine temper before he ground out, “May I ask the reason for your visit, your highness?”

It would have been good manners to offer her a seat, pour her some wine. Except the only seating in the room was the bed, and the wine hadn’t arrived yet, hence his unfortunate sobriety. So they just stood there for a moment, him next to the bed and her just inside the doorway, before Michael finally finished her irritatingly thorough inspection of the room and said, still not looking at him, “I am going to be an acting observer during the next tour of duty of the _Buran_.”

“Are you,” he said, at which point the door chimed.

It had closed behind Michael, but at least the Orions had the manners to knock, so Gabriel knew not to shoot the porter when he walked in a few seconds later carrying three glasses in one hand and a case of Orion red under the other. Gabriel poured himself a glass as soon as the porter left, and briefly considered not pouring Michael a glass at all before common sense kicked in and he remembered Michael shooting a boy in the leg at eleven for not greeting her quickly enough at her birthday. So the first glass in the end went to Michael, held out until Michael at least paid attention to him long enough to take another step into the room and the glass from his hand, though her eyes never made it to his face. Like he was furniture, or that Kelpian slave of hers, instead of the right hand of her mother Emperor.

His sole comfort was the knowledge that the wine was terrible.

Even Michael noticed, was actually derailed a bit by it, and she normally didn’t give two shits about such things. “How can you drink this?”

“You stop noticing about five glasses in,” he said, downing his own glass in one long swallow with a grimace. “Anyway, I’m not sure why that news merited you coming to Orion. The next time some group of aliens decides to get it into their heads to challenge the might of the Terran Empire, should the Emperor wish it, you are of course welcome to watch as I blow the shit out of them, but considering how I scorched Andoria’s capital to ashes less than nine weeks ago, I don’t expect-”

“Mother wants you back on the expeditionary force.”

The wine glass cracked in Gabriel’s hand. “No.”

Michael’s expression was perfectly even, her only movement a slight tilt of her hand as she swirled her wine. “It wasn’t a request.”

Gabriel sat down on the bed, dropping the broken wine glass carelessly on the bedside dresser as he did. Unforgivably rude, borderline treasonous, to sit in the presence of the heir presumptive while she herself was not seated, but fuck it, he was still mostly naked and would already be too plastered to see straight if the Emperor was just, but- “Your mother- the Emperor, and I have an understanding. She doesn’t have me fucking about in unknown space.”

Michael was unmoved. “Implication isn’t a promise, Gabriel.” Only then did her eyes actually light upon him, flickering down once before making their way to his face. “The _Buran’s_ mission starts March first.”

Gabriel hadn’t been on Orion long enough yet to lose track of the date, which in of itself spoke to the brevity of his leave thus far. Usually he couldn’t even see straight after less than a day. “That’s in three days.”

“Obviously,” said Michael. “Our shuttle is at the main bay. We leave in an hour.”

It probably wasn’t smart, but Gabriel couldn’t resist the urge to say, “Bit below the daughter of the Emperor to play messenger.”

Michael just raised that infernal eyebrow of hers again. “I volunteered. Call it… curiosity.” Her eyes raked down him once more, this time rather more deliberately.

Gabriel tried very hard not to twitch. “Satisfied?”

For the first time since she walked into the room, something like a smirk quirked the edge of Michael’s mouth. “We’ll see.” She turned and headed for the door, pausing only for a moment a step into the hallway. “Leave the wine.”

Gabriel waited a good thirty seconds until after Michael’s departure before throwing the open bottle at the door, just for the satisfaction of hearing it shatter. The walls in here were thin, after all, and he wasn’t about to let Philippa Georgiou’s daughter know exactly how easily the Emperor could still get under his skin.

\--*--

His new orders awaited him on his PADD, which he had buried at the bottom of his bag and would historically have stayed there for at least a month. It actually took him a few minutes to find it once he boarded Michael’s shuttle, but once he turned it on, the orders for the _Buran’s_ new mission flashed there, plain: a one-year mission for the _ISS Buran_ , to explore the outskirts of what had two months ago been Andorian space.

It had almost certainly been mapped by the Andorians at some point, but the Andorians were spiteful fucks and had wiped their archives, so for the Terran Empire it was a complete blank. Charting it was a job that needed doing, true, considering it was Terran territory now and the Emperor needed to know who her new subjects were before she could begin subjugating them, but not one that needed doing by him, Gabriel Lorca. Any curiosity he’d held for the unknown had been thoroughly carved out of him during his first stint on the expeditionary force, and he hadn’t regained one bit of it in the twelve years since. If he had any say in it, he would have spent the rest of his life within the Terran Empire’s carefully delineated borders. He didn’t always get his wish considering the Empire’s expansionist policies, but he’d at least thought the Emperor agreed with him that he had no business outside charted space.

Apparently he’d thought wrong.

He turned his comm over in his hand, dismissing an errant thought before it even became fully formed. Half a lifetime ago, calling Philippa Georgiou would have been as natural as breathing. But then, half a lifetime ago she’d been just the Emperor’s heir, and now… well. One didn’t question the Emperor.

The current heir was sitting next to him now, expertly programming in a warp vector. Except he hadn’t attended the Academy with this one, hadn’t fought wargames with or against her or gotten drunk holed up in her hotel room on the eve of his graduation, bragged to her about the worlds he would conquer for the Empire over bad Thai food and worse beer, slept on her floor when the idea of staggering back to the dorms was too much to bear. Hadn’t trusted her, once. This heir was near a stranger. And so he stayed quiet until she finished her programming and engaged the warp drive. He thought about asking her about the lack of either co-pilot or bodyguard—the shuttle was completely empty but for the two of them—but it wasn’t smart to imply either incompetence or that the heir couldn’t protect herself. Besides, he’d just remembered. “You just graduated from the Academy.”

Michael nodded, coolly. She worked much more at her poker face than the Emperor had ever bothered. Gabriel couldn’t read her at all. “Last week. But my first official posting doesn’t begin for a year.”

That made some sort of sense. It wouldn’t do for the heir’s first posting to be anything less than glorious, and there wasn’t a lot of that going around at the moment. Despite graduating a full year early, Michael had come out too late for a decent war. But still. “There must have been something better for you in the meantime than an observer posting during an expeditionary mission.”

Michael shrugged. “No one is to know who I am.” She handed him her own PADD, across which the name _Michael Norfolk_ flashed above an observer ident. “It will be a chance for me to observe an active vessel without being observed in turn.”

At that, Gabriel had to grin. “The Emperor didn’t send you to audit me then?” That was the usual reason for an observer, though he’d admittedly never had one before on the _Buran_.

Michael just raised an eyebrow at him and turned back to the star charts, and Gabriel didn’t push her further. As a cover story for the Emperor’s heir, posing as an observer made sense. Observers were untouchable, the Emperor’s eyes and ears. They could go anywhere, ask anyone of anything. Any vessel that returned without theirs had its entire crew summarily executed for treason. The _Buran_ was also probably long overdue due for an auditing, so no one would question it. If all the Emperor wanted was for her heir to get her feet wet before being shoved summarily into the spotlight, it was the perfect posting.

He just resented that the arrangement came at his expense, but that wasn’t safe to say either.

Hardly anything he thought these days was.

\--*--

They arrived at Starbase One in less than a day, but that still only left two days for a debrief before heading out, and that wasn’t much when faced with a one-year expeditionary mission with a brand new crew. The Emperor may have let him keep the _Buran_ from mission to mission, but serving under him had always been a fast-track to promotion as long as no one was stupid enough to let themselves get stabbed in the back, so his bridge crew during the Andorian war had all been promoted up and out the second it was over, most everyone else reassigned. The sea of faces that awaited him in the conference hall was full of nothing but strangers, which meant his eyes kept flickering to Michael in the back of the room, for lack of anyone else more familiar, as he ran through his usual speech about serving for the glory of the Empire.

It wasn’t a good speech. It was, in fact, a terrible speech, because he couldn’t summon anything like his usual enthusiasm for it, considering what he’d expected to be at least several months of leave had instead been cut off after less than eight hours for a fucking expeditionary mission, and he was still tired, and irritable, and didn’t want to be there. So he said the right words, and he watched the sea of faces shift uncomfortably at his monotone, because the poor sons of bitches _did_ want to be there, or had before they realized what they were dealing with. He’d read through the crews’ dossiers on the shuttle ride over, and they were all specced for deep-space exploration; the Emperor had given him that much, at least, up-and-comers to a man, except they weren’t his usual crop of hard-nosed soldiers. Less than a third of them had killed, and only half of those in combat. They were all explorers, scientists, with personality profiles that spoke of a deep yearning and curiosity for the unknown.

They were, therefore, far more qualified for this mission than he was.

Michael remained silent throughout, though she waited until only a few seconds after the last of the crew had filed out and the door slid shut behind them to say, “That was underwhelming.”

Lorca smiled, knowing he was showing too much of his teeth. “Sorry to disappoint, your highness.”

Michael seemed undeterred. “You are their captain. The crew takes its cues from you, and your obvious dissatisfaction with this mission comes very close to questioning the will of the Emperor.”

“Well, Observer Norfolk,” Lorca drawled, leaning back against the podium, “You are of course well within your rights to report your observations throughout the course of this mission. Should you believe my thoughts or actions at any point to-” he trailed off as Michael pushed off from the far wall and started stalking towards him, “… What-“

There was very little give in the Terran officer’s uniform, which somehow didn’t stop Michael from grabbing and twisting at his collar hard enough to choke him.

He had become slow. There hadn’t been an honest attempt on his life in years—no matter the Terran Empire’s tendency towards self-promotion through murder, advancement was usually quick enough under his command that most didn’t think it worth the risk to their own careers to try and kill him—and the Emperor obviously hadn’t skimped on Michael’s combat training, because when he instinctively grabbed at her wrist to lessen the pressure on his throat, Michael just let herself be pulled in far enough that a simple turn and drop in her center of gravity threw him over her shoulder to land hard on his back, his collar still twisted in Michael’s grip.

He tried to cough, but couldn’t even get enough air for that.

Michael crouched over him for just a second before shifting all of her weight onto her knees, one positioned over his right wrist and the other over his throat, leaving her hands free to catch his left arm in a lock as he struggled.

His vision was already greying around the edges as Michael said, quietly, “Your childish behavior is tiresome. If I am to become Emperor one day, I must learn to command. I don’t want to spend the next year watching you go through the motions and petulantly dance around the edges of treason because you feel my mother has wronged you. You are the Admiral of the Fleet and the right hand of the Emperor.” She twisted his left arm abruptly, stopping only millimeters from dislocating his elbow. “ _Act like it_.”

She released him all at once, the pressure lifting as she let go of his left arm and pushed herself to her feet, but for over a minute all he could do was gasp curled up on the floor, struggling to get air through the phantom weight of her knee on his throat.

Still, he eventually managed to croak out, “Pretty hands on for an Observer.”

Michael seemed unmoved. “When necessary.” She still hadn’t backed away, and thus was technically within easy grabbing range, but considering how she had moved earlier, Gabriel didn’t fancy his chances even if he hadn’t been currently coughing on the floor at her feet. He had never managed to beat Georgiou in hand-to-hand at the Academy, and he was beginning to suspect her daughter had most of the same teachers. Not good odds there if he wasn’t willing to go in for the kill, and while the Emperor gave him far more leeway than she granted anyone else, somehow he didn’t think that extended to murdering her daughter, no matter the reason.

The only saving grace here was that Michael had at least waited until they were alone.

Whatever else Gabriel might have thought to say to her was wasted, however, because as soon as his breathing evened out, Michael turned and walked out of the room, leaving him to get to his feet on his own, the ache lingering in his left arm, in his throat every time he dared to swallow.

He allowed a smile to twist his face only after he was sure Michael was gone. Adopted or not, Michael was very much her mother’s daughter.


End file.
